About the Bloomberg interview

As anybody interested in Saudi Arabia, I read the Crown Prince’s interview with Bloomberg. As a communication professional, I also tried to figure out what image of the Crown Prince this interview projected, what impression it left me beyond the very detailed information that was shared.

See, I am a big, big fan of your Crown Prince, I think he is a great chance for Saudi Arabia and for the region, and I am trying to follow everything he says or does. I think I see a potential in him that he is even unaware of.

Much to my surprise, the interview bored me. I read a big chunk of the transcript, but then after a while, it bored me and I couldn’t get myself to finish it. If I am being honest, it wasn’t just boredom, I was annoyed by some of the questions and by some of the answers. It was the typical, quite dull business interview.

In the back of my mind, a voice kept pestering me “Bloomberg?! What acting head of state gives such a long interview to Bloomberg, especially since he gives so few interviews?” For the record, I have nothing against Bloomberg and I can certainly see that the Aramco IPO was supposed to be the main topic of the interview but still, it felt odd to chose Bloomberg over more mainstream media like the Guardian or the Washington Post, especially in the context of the comments President Trump made, especially since, to my knowledge, the Crown Prince hadn't given an interview in a while.

Coincidentally, the night before the interview was published I had a bit of a Twitter chat with a few Saudis about President Trump’s relationship to Saudi Arabia. For months, I have been under the impression that President Trump is fooling Saudi Arabia, that Saudi Arabia is nothing to him but his best client. For months, I have had the feeling Saudis like President Trump for the sole reason that he is not President Obama and they turn a blind eye to a few signs that should, in my opinion, raise warnings.

(On a side note, I see Saudis constantly blaming Barack Obama, but I see little analysis on what led to this disconnect on the Saudi side. Communication is a two-way street and as long as you don’t understand what in your own behavior makes it difficult to communicate and be heard by a specific person, you risk having the same issues with other people.)

With President Trump, things seem to be much better. But to me, this relationship is based on misunderstandings that everybody agrees to ignore for now. I wonder how long those appearances will stand. I thought they would until the so-called “deal of the century” becomes public. But last week, President Trump who is being attacked as part of the midterms campaign on his closeness to Saudi Arabia, couldn’t help making this comment about how King Salman wouldn’t make it 2 weeks without US protection.

I thought it was an eye opener to those in Saudi Arabia who want to open their eyes but it certainly wasn’t to me. I have long seen President Trump’s dubious attitude to Saudi Arabia, from the way he was fake smiling on his visit to Riyadh, embarrassed to do the sword dance with King Salman (while this should have been an honor), to the way, it seemed, Saudi Arabia was not warned about the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, to the way he barely acknowledged His Excellency Adel Al Jubeir a few days ago at the UN General Assembly.

And on Palestine, if really President Trump was such a close ally, Saudi Arabia should have obtained from him not to move that embassy. At the very least, this should have raised a warning. But it didn't, it's almost forgotten already. President Trump keeps getting by, only because he is not President Obama.

I was again sharing this on Twitter, saying President Trump has no interest in Saudi Arabia beyond the money your country brings to the American economy, and much to my surprise, some Saudis answered something along the lines of “we know that, we know how to play that game too”. Someone mentioned a quote by Lord Palmerston “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have interests.”

It honestly shocked me to realize, through those answers, that to those Saudis, good international relationships are nothing but trade and mutual interests. This is a very unambitious way to consider international relationships, especially given the country’s role as the cradle of one of the world’s largest religion.

It shocked me, and to be honest, it disappointed me a little to realize through the interview with Bloomberg, that the Crown Prince mostly seems to share this view. Again, I had the feeling President Trump got by, only because he is not President Obama.

See, I think too many people in the West have no interest in Saudi Arabia beyond the money they can make off you, and I am finding this quite sad. But reading the Crown Prince‘s interview and having those Twitter conversations, it made me sad to realize that you seem to have accepted this as a given.

Yet, if you ask me, Saudi Arabia should aim much higher than being just tolerated, it should aim higher than securing trade partners who agree to sell you stuff you need. You should aim at being understood and supported enthusiastically, you should aim at having true friends and supporters among western nations and among individual westerners, people who encourage you on the path you have chosen to take.

Sometimes, I discuss this with French people, and I often get frustrated. People say we shouldn’t sell you weapons. To this, I answer that Saudi Arabia is buying what we are prepared to sell them. And that is not much. We are not selling you our best things, like our expertise in tourism, like our know-how in cultural management, like our passion for food and for fashion, like our medical expertise because, and it’s sad to say, we are snobs who think you are not worthy of us, snobs who think you are too unsophisticated to be able to appreciate refinement. Those conversations make me angry, let me tell you.

But when I see your unwavering support to President Trump, who is certainly one of the least refined leaders on the planet right now, it makes me quite frustrated as well.

As frustrating as this might be, I keep trying to find ways to bridge those gaps, at the expense of my own emotional comfort.

A few months ago, I contacted a major French company, they are involved in telecom and media, their CEO had met with the Crown Prince when he was in Paris. I wrote to this man and said that I wanted to start a production company to make movies set in the region, to tell compelling stories about Saudi Arabia, because, as I said, Saudi Arabia has many compelling stories beyond the stereotypical ones, and I asked whether they might be interested in investing in such a company. Believe me, this investment is not much to them and I have all the credentials for such a project, the right schools, the relevant work experience, the business background, almost a decade in the region.

But a few weeks later, someone in their philanthropy department answered that unfortunately all their budgets were allocated already. It frustrated me, because this is how they see movie production in Saudi Arabia, like a philanthropy gig.

The reason I wanted to start this company is not because of the money, even though I thought this could be a reasonably productive investment, but because Saudi Arabia needs to drastically change its narrative. And you should be ambitious there.

If I was working as a communication advisor to the kingdom, my goal would be for Saudi Arabia to be, not just tolerated, but respected and understood, maybe even loved and in any case, supported. My goal would even be to make you the hottest thing on the market, the place where as an investor you actually want to be, not to make money, but to be part of an adventure.

Actually, I think Westerners don’t understand your story because you are not telling your story in the most favorable way.

I think what’s going on in Saudi Arabia is comparable in a way to what went on in Eastern Europe when the Berlin wall fell. But Westerners don’t understand we are looking at a soft revolution taking place because they are fooled by the fact that facially, nothing has changed. For years, because you were a closed country, we in the West were not aware of the power struggle that must have gone on between the progressive and the conservative forces in your country. 

And today, again because facially, nothing has changed, we in the West don’t understand that a soft revolution is taking place in front of our eyes, people who had the power in Saudi Arabia no longer have it, people who decided how the everyday life in the country was ruled no longer get to decide. Westerners don’t realize that King Salman and the Crown Prince actually managed to do a revolution with very, very little collateral damage. Westerners don’t realize how powerful this is because you don't talk that way about what's happening for reasons that are quite obvious to understand.

If people in the West realized a soft revolution has taken place, they surely would encourage it. Companies would invest the same way they invested in Eastern Europe in the 90s because despite the uncertainty, it was a matter of principles, because as a big company, you had to be there, because this was an exciting time and you could not risk missing out. You simply had to be there if you wanted to be seen as living with the times.

Similarly, if my narrative is accurate, Saudi Arabia should play on the same spring. Saudi Arabia should become like an uncharted territory, investing in Saudi Arabia should be an exciting adventure companies want to be part of. I mean, who still thinks such investment decisions are rational ones, of course they are not. Those investments are made on a hunch, and sometimes on a fear of being left out.

But this interview with Bloomberg, I am afraid, is not going to help in that direction. All those details about Aramco... It’s big and it’s important, I get it but I mean, Aramco has a CEO, shouldn’t he be doing most of that talking?

Your Crown Prince fascinates me. He really does. I think that one day, he can be the most influential monarch on the planet, but in my humble opinion, he has a few things left to learn, like the power you can drive from defining the right narrative for your policies. Giving an interview is not about answering question, it's about embarking people on a story. And the way you tell that story matters a whole lot.

One brief passage says it all. “I don’t care how the world views me as much as I care about what’s in the interest of the country and the Saudi people. Whatever serves the Saudi people and Saudi Arabia as a country, I will do it with full force, regardless of the impressions that it will create about me.”

He’s right, it’s not about him, but at the same time, it could all be about him. I think the Crown Prince should build his legend, not for himself but because that would be the best way to serve the country. I can see that because he is humble, because he think his person is unimportant, he's not doing it despite the fact that it would be in your country's best interest.

I really think he should reconsider.

See, your Crown prince is in this proxy war of communication with a bunch of old-timers from the region, Khamenei, Nasrallah, the conservative clerics. I always think that his best chance to quietly win this war is not to say they did this or they did that. I am sorry, but in the wider world, people can't be bothered with those arguments. People are shallow, we all need to accept that.

I always think that your Crown Prince best chance to win this war is to make those other guys look awfully outdated and uncool compared to him. If I was his advisor, I would certainly tell him to make more of an effort to quietly look like a man of his time. Change the decor in the royal palace, wear a baseball hat sometimes, take your kids to the movies, use a bit of lighthearted humor here and there. Also a man of his time and of his wealth should certainly have taken an hour to test drive a Tesla. (By the way, each time a journalist is surprised by an answer, take note, because journalists intuitively know what the “right” answers should be.)

The Crown Prince is a very intelligent man, this interview has certainly proven that his understanding of quite complex financial matters is not shallow and that’s certainly a great thing for the future of Saudi Arabia. But in my opinion, with all due respect, he has yet to understand the power of communication, and how much one narrative versus another can be a powerful game-changer for the country.